Kenneth Atchity's Blog, page 158

Where is the Muslim Gandhi?

Muckraking headlines scream “Islamic Terrorists” in one ear. In the other, the President of the United States, perhaps in an excess of responsibility, has a hard time saying out loud that our western way of life is imminently threatened by an evil originating within the doctrines of Islam.

Liberals have a harder time admitting their fear-based bigotry than Conservatives. The latter have no qualms in applauding Donald Trump’s ideas of registering, if not rounding up, Muslims in the free world and putting them into some sort of modern surveillance version of the internment camps for Japanese-Americans during World War II.

But after the Brussels’ attacks, even Liberals admit that the western system doesn’t seem capable, or even willing, to protect itself from these jihadists.

The Islamic jihadist purpose is clear: to use fear to destroy us.

What is our purpose?

While we’re sitting around at our freedom bars and libraries trying to figure that out, here’s a quicker and more effective hope:

A Muslim Gandhi.

The profound silence of the mainstream, non-fanatic, Muslim community is deafening. Random imams saying that “Islam is a religion of peace” just ain’t cuttin’ it. They’re so unconvincing we can’t even remember their names. An Arabic-American friend, who was raised in Saudi culture, confirms that children are regularly taught to hate us and to earn Muhammed’s eternal love by offing us.

The relative silence from peaceful Islam is also worsening anti-Islamic prejudice that’s increasing daily in the threatened countries of the west—a prejudice that’s further worsened by the perceived refusal of Muslims to integrate with their adoptive societies and demanding, in many cases, that we be ruled by their sharia law instead of their being ruled by the laws of the country that welcomed them to its shores. This situation will deteriorate even more as Muslim populations continue to grow within western countries due to immigration and their per-family fecundity. Twenty-five years from now, from sheer force of numbers, they will be dominating congresses, parliaments, and diets.

Three theories for mainstream Muslim silence heard most often:

1)    Mainstream Muslims are terrified by the terrorists too.
2)    Mainstream Muslims are hedging their allegiances, ready to jump either way depending on whether the jihadists succeed or fail.
3)    The press, intent on selling sensationalism, isn’t covering the “peaceful Islam.”

We can all hope it’s the first reason. But we’re getting impatient with the spate of recent reports that mainstream Muslims complain about “growing anti-Islam sentiment.” Why don’t the complainers acknowledge the reasons for it?

Reasons for profiling are written in blood on our sidewalks.

Sure, most enlightened folk understand that the whole cannot be blamed for the sins of the part. But the human race has never been suffused with enlightenment. If ten mafia murders happen in your town in a month, citizens begin looking askance at all Italians. Ironic, isn’t it, that African Americans look harmless in an airport compared to Muslim tourists. As much as Hillary, Bernie, Kasich, and other fair-minded politicians proclaim political correctness, you can’t really expect the common man or woman to blanket forgive all past and future transgressions against their security by people who just happen to be Muslim. To most normal folk, 1 + 1 + 1 = 15. One transgression after another, all in the same pattern of being committed by Muslims against their tolerant, majority-non-Muslim neighbors, will add up in most peoples’ math as: “Islamic people want to kill us.” Occasional random Muslim victims don’t change this simple-minded math. Ask Donald Trump.

Why hasn’t the enormous worldwide Muslim community long ago come forward with a mainstream Muslim visionary, who can speak out on behalf of their common interest with the western mainstream in preserving freedom for all? To insist the Muslims worldwide publically proclaim Islam a religion of peace?

Surely there must be such potential leaders in a neighborhood mosque near you. Why aren’t they speaking out? Why don’t we know who they are? Why isn’t the most vocal of them a household word by now? Why aren’t we able to list their good works on behalf of the greater community?

Maybe time for Muslims to use Craig’s List?

Wajeeh Y. Nuseibeh (by David Blumenfeld)
Photo by David Blumenfeld/Special to The ChroniclePhoto by David Blumenfeld/Special to The Chronicle“Wanted: Non-fanatic, distinguished, eloquent practicing Muslim needed immediately for all media appearances, live speaking engagements, reeducating liaison with jihadists, and interventions during terrorist attacks. Must be willing to stand up to jihadist threats and fatwahs, put family’s security on the line, be relentless in spreading the vision of Muslims throughout the world living in daily harmony with non-Muslims--like the Nuseibeh family who for 1300 years has been keeper of the key at the most sacred non-Muslim shrine in Israel (See San Francisco Chronicle)--tolerant of all religious beliefs despite his or her own allegiance to Allah—and be willing to lose head if necessary.”
Gandhi was willing. Martin Luther King was. Pope Francis demonstrates his willingness every time he meets the public in Africa or America, or even in St. Peter’s Square. 

“A man or woman whose commitment to the promise of humanity transcends self and fear. Compensation: Nobel Prize, and the gratitude of a beleaguered humanity.”

Warner, CMC announce 12-movie package that includes MEG

Jon Turteltaub in talks to direct.  After forming joint venture Flagship Entertainment in Hong Kong in September last year, Warner Bros. and China Media Capital (CMC) have announced plans for the production and global release of a dozen movies under the Flagship Entertainment banner over the coming two years. Chinese news website china.org.cn reported Warner Bros. chairman Kevin Tsujihara as saying the high-quality co-productions would appeal to a wide demographic of audiences both in China and around the world.

According to CMC chairman Li Ruigang, the film package would include an adaptation of best-selling science-fiction novel MEG: A Novel of Deep Terror by Steve Alten and cost over $100 million to produce. MEG tells the story of a deep-sea diver who while diving in the Mariana Trench is attacked by what he believes to be a megalodon, a gigantic predecessor of modern sharks thought to have been extinct since the Pleistocene era. Nobody believes him, but as the events unfold he encounters more of the creatures, some of which manage to make their way to the surface and wreak havoc.

Read more at Film Journal

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See more at BookBub

Interview – Ken Atchity – Latest Novel – Brae MacKenzie

 
Kenneth John Atchity Author of Homer’s Iliad: The Shield of Memory – Which was his Ph.D. Dissertation. The work was awarded Yale Graduate School’s Highest Academic Honor – The Porter Prize; and was later published by Southern Illinois University Press (Edited by John Gardner).  Mentors at Yale Included Thomas Ber.

Kenneth John Atchity Author of Homer’s Iliad: The Shield of Memory – Which was his Ph.D. Dissertation. The work was awarded Yale Graduate School’s Highest Academic Honor – The Porter Prize; and was later published by Southern Illinois University Press (Edited by John Gardner).  Mentors at Yale Included Thomas Bergin, Thomas Greene, A. Bartlett Giamatti, Richard Ellinger, Eric Segal and Lowry Nelson Jr.

His Twenty Books Include:

Homer: Critical Essays (G.K.Hall), The Renaissance Reader (HarperCollins), The Classical Greek Reader (Harper-Oxford University Press),Italian Literature: Roots & Branches (Yale University Press), A Writer’s Time (W.W. Norton) Seven Ways to Die (with William Diehl) (Story Merchant Books) The Classical Roman Reader (Harper-Oxford), The Messiah Matrix.

Kenneth represents writers of both fiction and nonfiction. He accounts for numerous bestsellers and movies both produced in television and on the big screen. In 2011 he was nominated for an Emmy Award for Producing “The Kennedy Detail.”

We are very pleased to introduce our readers to his latest addition to storytelling which is called Brae MacKenzie.

Ken, Brae Mackenzie is a romance of Mythic Identity. What inspired her story?

I had it in the back of my mind for years, ever since I did a driving tour of Scotland and fell in love with the place and its mysterious past.

What made you decide to try out Romance?

Actually romance, for me, is a ‘return to the old neighborhood.’ My first film project after leaving academia was a series of sixteen romance movies (“Shades of Love”) that allowed me to explore romance from every angle. I’ve been in love with romantic literature since college when I read Denis de Rougemont’s Love in the Western World and realized the power of romantic love over our western imaginations. I conceived of Brae Mackenzie as the first of a series of romances about American women returning to the countries of their origins to discover their true selves in the myths of that country.

How has the audience received the book since its launch last week?

It’s too early to tell. It hasn’t been out long enough for anyone even to read it. I hope your followers will take a look—and write a review on amazon.com

What made you decide to give it a mythical underline?

It wasn’t really a conscious decision. I’ve always loved romance and when I wrote one I wanted to explore my equal fascination with local myths, which form such a strong part of our unconscious minds, our yearnings and questionings.

Can you tell us a bit more about your main character? What makes her relatable?

Like so many contemporary women Brae is juggling so many balls she doesn’t have time and space to question what she’s doing. Beneath it all, though, is that nagging feeling that she’s missing out on life—that there’s something in her depths that isn’t being satisfied.

Can you give us a bit more insight into what it takes for you to write your stories?

I realize, after readying this book for publication, that it takes courage among other things. What if no one likes the story? What if there’s no audience for it? At the end of the day, though, it’s a story that has haunted me for years and I felt it deserved to be out there to make its own way in the world.

Does it involve a lot of research and planning?
I tend to start with a bunch of facts that intrigue me, then find a story to incorporate them. As I write the story, I don’t stop to check out the veracity of the details—I just imagine what the story needs. Then, when I get stuck somewhere, I turn to serious research to get me unstuck and generally discover that the facts I imagined are more accurate than I could have predicted; I also discover facts that I had not imagined, and work them into the story as I go along. Finally when the first draft is done, I do the most serious checking and research which tends to enrich the story. That’s where the serendipity happens—when you discover facts you had no idea were out there and they somehow magically seem to work in your story.

How long does it take from an idea to a full book?

In this case it’s taken 30 years or so. I did the first draft when I was teaching mythology at Occidental College, shoved it in a drawer somewhere as other things took my attention. Found it, when cleaning out my drawers and asked my top editor to read it and tell me what she thought. She insisted I finish and publish it, so I spent a year revising it repeatedly until it was at the point where I needed to get it born and out there on its own to find its fate.

What’s next for Ken the author?

I just finished the first volume of my memoirs, A Story Merchant’s Story: Growing up Atchity. Now I’m working on the second “novel of mythic identity,” this one about a Sicilian-American woman, faced with a crisis in her career, who turns her back on it to go to Sicily for the first time and discover her origins. I love Sicily so much I couldn’t resist it.
What other romance novels are you thinking of?

I love to travel, to learn new things, to eat the local cuisine so I’m hoping to do a Japanese novel, as well as ones set in Ireland, England, France, Spain, Mongolia, maybe Brazil and Mexico.

Where can people look forward to meet you?

I’ll be meeting and assisting writers at the Dublin Writers Conference in June, hosted by Laurence O’Bryann of booksgosocial.com.  Sign up at http://thebookpromoter.com/conference/ I’d love to meet your readers there!

Where can readers find the books?

Brae MacKenzie Available on Amazon

Read More at Nadine Martiz's My Addiction-Novels

Bill Borchert Wants to Chat With You!

WILLIAM G BORCHERT is an Emmy nominated screenwriter ("My Name Is Bill W.", "When Love is not Enough") and author of eight books. How I Became My Father is ... A Drunk! Available on Amazon: http://amzn.com/B016V6PFRE



Addiction to alcohol and/or drugs is a devastating and incomprehensible disease. It reaches down into the very core of the alcoholic and his or her family and destroys their most precious possessions--love, faith, trust, confidence and finally hope.

While intimate and painful at times this book tells the dramatic love story of one such family. It initially focuses on how the backlash of alcoholism foments anger and hatred between and father and son that eventually inundates the entire family. Every glitter of hope is seemingly drowned and growing despair leads to near devastation.

Angels in the Snow - Streaming on Amazon!

The dysfunctional Montgomery family go to their cabin for Christmas where a blizzard traps them inside. When the Tucker family arrives needing shelter, they are welcomed inside and remind the Montgomery family how to love each other.  http://amzn.com/B018JG96RE 

Interview with William G. Borchert – Author, National Speaker and Emmy Award Nominated Screenwriter.

Even if you don’t recognize the name William (Bill) G. Borchert immediately, it is quite likely, if you’re in recovery from alcoholism, you will have watched one of his movies, and/or read one of his books, perhaps more than once. Bill is a multi-published author, national speaker and Emmy Award nominated screenwriter for the highly acclaimed Warner Brothers/Hallmark Hall of Fame movie, “My Name Is Bill W”. It won three Emmy Awards and has become the most watched television movie ever made. Bill also wrote the screenplay for the Entertainment One/Hallmark Hall of Fame movie, “When Love Is Not Enough” which was based on his book about Lois Wilson, Co-Founder of Al-Anon and wife of Bill Wilson.

Bill began his career as a journalist in New York City, working as a reporter and writer for one of Americas most prominent daily newspapers. After working as a feature writer for national magazines and creating syndicated radio shows, Bill became a partner at Artists Entertainment Complex, an independent film production company that went on to produce a number of box office hits including “Kansas City Bomber”, “Serpico” and “Dog Day Afternoon”.

I had the privilege of interviewing Bill Borchert recently, about his remarkable life and latest book, “How I became my Father, a Drunk”, which was published in October 2015 by Story Merchant Books, Los Angeles, California. The book gives an intimate and highly emotional account of his life growing up in an alcoholic home, his own journey through alcoholism and how he overcame his difficult past, to become one of the most proactive carriers of the Twelve Step Message in modern history.

Nicola:  Bill, it’s an honor to talk to you today. I appreciate you giving me your time. I’ve read many personal     accounts of recovery from addiction, but this one touched me on a whole other level. I think it’s because it’s so familiar to me and triggered some deep emotion. What were the emotional challenges for you writing your entire life story – or were there any?

Bill: It was a challenge in the beginning because it wasn’t something I was planning to write – ever. It was a gentleman that I met at a convention that suggested and encouraged me to do it. Then with further encouragement from my brother, sisters and my wife, I decided to go ahead and begin writing. It was around that same time I found a cigar box that I hadn’t opened in years, belonging to my Father. It was filled with notes he wrote from his days at twelve step meetings and when I started to read through them, I realized that this was a book that God wanted me to write. Halfway through writing the book all my pain went away and it became an exhilarating experience – and eventually turned out to be a wonderful experience.

Nicola:  You write in detail about very early years of your life. Was it difficult to recall those times?

Bill:What’s amazing is that sometimes I can’t remember what happened yesterday, but I can remember things from forty or fifty years ago. I also talked to my siblings if I needed clarification on anything, but mostly the memories were still vivid.

Nicola: You talk in the book about your writing as a young boy. Do you think it was a form of therapy or escape for you?

Bill: It was absolutely a form of escape. The holy sisters that taught me in school encouraged me to read and I became an avid reader. I loved to read stories about simple people who did heroic things and I could imagine myself doing them also. As I began to write it enabled me to get out of myself and be able to become other people and therefore escape the terrible things going on in my own home. It helped me a lot.

Nicola: You entered a seminary at fourteen years old with the intention of becoming an Ordained Catholic Priest. There was a comment your Uncle made to you about being able to change your mind about your decision anytime you want– and you held onto what he said and replayed that thought in your mind over the years. It suggests to me that you entered the seminary for other reasons than devotion to God. Would my assumption be right?

Bill: It turned out that when I began to get honest with myself and did an honest inventory of, I had to admit that a very large part of me going away to that seminary, was to get out of the house and get away from the situation. I loved being in the seminary. I had no home sickness. I was so happy and felt nurtured there. The trauma I experienced happened when I would come home on summer vacations. My mother noticed this and she would get very upset because I wanted to leave so soon after getting home.

Nicola: And of course that would bring up guilt feelings for you – being torn between your loyalty to your family and the need to feel safe at the seminary?

Bill: Oh yes – absolutely. But that’s how it is for children raised in alcoholic homes. There is a feeling of fear almost all the time.

Nicola: You managed to highlight the chronic co-dependency present in your entire family and how each member of the family interacted with the other. The high emotion was beautifully but painfully depicted – especially between your sister and mother.

Bill: Yes, my sister and I have talked a lot about this stuff since I wrote the book. She would constantly try to please my mother, but whatever she did it was never good enough and she could never understand why. Again in alcoholic families there is so much misdirected anger and confusion – it’s most definitely a family disease.

Nicola: It was interesting to me, that despite the discipline and praying at the seminary, you had a thought come to you that you couldn’t actually feel the presence of God – you believed He was there, but couldn’t feel Him. With the heavy reliance on a Higher Power being the central part of a twelve step path, do you think if you had felt that back then it would have steered you away from your alcoholism?

Bill: That’s a good question, but I don’t know. And the reason I don’t know – is because I’ve had a lot of friends who became priests and still wound up becoming alcoholics. When I talk to them they’ve said they didn’t really find a personal God until they entered a twelve step program. Even though they became ordained priests and served in parishes and went on missions to different parts of the world. But it wasn’t until they found twelve step that they felt connected.

Nicola: Do you think that’s because in twelve step it’s encouraged to find your own understanding of a God?

Bill: I think so, yes! Because the thing is, I didn’t find God, I was taught God. I was told this is the God I should believe in. And because of all the strictness of that God, to me everything became a sin. That’s what I became to believe. So It’s very tough to find a personal loving God when you’ve got that kind of, tsar like strictness.

Nicola:  That strictness comes from your Catholic upbringing?

Bill: Yes I believe so. I’ve got what I always call a 1950’s conscience, where everything I did was wrong. I remember one day in religion class, when the sister talked about moral sin – she would walk to the boys side of the classroom. She said, if you look at a girl and have an impure thought, you can go to hell for that. And I remember the guy, McDonald was his name, sitting behind me saying “well if you can go to hell for thinking about it, you may as well go the whole way and just do it”. So there was this huge confusion and fear in my life. Even wearing patent leather shoes was a sin. So I became very confused and fearful about religion and God. In the seminary I was disappointed that I couldn’t feel the presence of God – especially because the other boys there could. So my spiritual director saw that I wasn’t developing a spiritual life you need to be a Catholic priest.

Nicola: Where do you find and feel God now?

Bill: A lot of people have said it, but I feel Him a lot at meetings. I find Him a lot through interpersonal relationships with the people that I sponsor, and now that I’ve gone back to my faith and back to church I find that I can connect to him in a way I couldn’t earlier in my life. Twelve step has enabled me to have a clearer picture of who God is. God allowed me to go through all the stuff that you read in my book in order for me to really find Him and carry His message to other people. I don’t believe that there’s a different God for everyone. God was with me every time I got into trouble. I’d be sitting at the bar and the bar tender would say – “I don’t know how you’re still alive kid” – and I’d reply – “it’s because I’ve got the Holy Ghost on my tail”.

Nicola: You seemed to have been guided by a lot of good people also, like Art McClure, your boss at one of the newspapers you worked for.

Bill: Art McClure was also a terrible drunk. He was like a father to me. He loved me to death and thought I was a great writer. Despite the fact that he was a drunk himself and had blown a big part of his career – he didn’t want me to do the same. Art still believed that alcohol was his friend in some way. That it kept him going. Yet he wanted something different for me.

Nicola: And of course there’s that romantic and sometimes chaotic correlation between the roaring drunk and the great writer. So many great writers died from alcoholism. Do you think your creativity was helped or hindered by your alcoholism?

Bill: At the time I thought I was a better writer with a few drinks – but it got to the stage where I would write something and I’d get up and couldn’t even read it the next morning. The ability to take advantage of the talent that God had given me didn’t come into play until I got sober. And it was difficult. It was not easy to write sober at first. I remember sitting at the typewriter with a blank sheet of paper and trying to put words on it and I was sweating blood because I had never done much before without a drink. I mean, I did everything with a few drinks.

Nicola: I remember beginning to write again as a sober woman, after not putting pen to paper for over fifteen years. The emotion that came up was stifling. I couldn’t get the words to make sense – Is that familiar to you?

Bill: That is absolutely, totally, familiar to me and I can relate totally. Also added to that was my low self-esteem and my terrible doubt about myself. I had gotten to a point in my life that I believed that I would never have a good life again, or accomplish again. Never again could I get a good job in the media. And so when I got sober I carried all this with me and I really didn’t think I was capable of writing anything good anymore. Thank God for my sponsor. I write about my sponsor Benny in the book. He was an incredible human being in a very simple way. He was a simple man from Brooklyn New York. He would encourage me in very simple ways – and he helped me find God again. He told me that God would not have given me these talents if I was not capable and unable to do something useful with them. It was because of him I started all over again. He would tell me all the time and I believe it to this day, that whatever we dream, we can do. God is not a big tease and he wouldn’t give us the ability to dream if it wasn’t possible to achieve those dreams.

Nicola: We always really need people on our side, like a coach when we lose that belief in ourselves, and it sounds like Benny was yours?

Bill: Yes he was definitely mine.

Nicola: So you are now fifty four years in recovery is that correct?

Bill: Yes this month – I came into recovery in March 1962.

Nicola:  The miracles seem to have started for you immediately. The whole book is a real testament to the effectiveness of twelve step recovery.

Bill: Yes. There was a sequence of events that happened, that I wrote about early on in my recovery that left me in no doubt that I was being looked after by a Higher Power. I can’t find another explanation for it.

Nicola: The concept of anonymity always intrigues me, especially when it comes to people who write about their experience and share it publicly. How do you interpret anonymity and do you regard yourself as anonymous still?

Bill: I try the best I can to be anonymous at the level of press radio and film, but I’m not anonymous to people who ask me, that I’m a recovered alcoholic. I’m not at all ashamed anymore, and I know there’s still a stigma. The reason there is a stigma is because people don’t know the recovered drunks. They only know the active drunk. They see the guy falling down the street or beating his wife, but they don’t know enough sober alcoholics that have found a good life, that are successful, and getting on with things because we hold it too close to our chest. We don’t have to say we are members of Alcoholics Anonymous, or whatever twelve step group we belong to. All we have to do is say that we have recovered in a twelve step program. I can say that and it’s not breaking my anonymity.

Nicola: Right – and I feel that the misinterpretation of anonymity does hinder rather than help – would you agree?

Bill: Dr. Bob used to always say that anonymity was the most misunderstood concept of Alcoholics Anonymous. He would get very upset when people would only use their first names at meetings. He would say we shouldn’t be anonymous to each other, and we still do it. It’s nuts because people don’t understand the true concept. It’s just about not revealing the twelve step program you belong to. It’s that simple.

Nicola: So when writing the scripts for My Name Is Bill W. and Love is Not Enough, you actually met and built up a strong relationship with Lois Wilson?

Bill: Oh yes, Lois, my wife Bernadette and I were very close friends for fifteen years.

Nicola: What was she like?

Bill: Oh she was a doll. She was the most simple, humble lady you would ever want to meet and at the same time, very strong in her opinions about things. How I really got to know what she was about was this; every year she would have a picnic at her home up in Stepping Stone New York and hundreds of people would come. At the end of the picnic Lois would come back inside and people would come in and say goodbye. I was standing in the living room one time, watching this go on. They would kneel in front of her and they would kiss her and they’d be crying thanking her for saving their lives, and for the new found strength of their families. I thought to myself, even God would be pleased with this type of adulation you know? And I asked her, “Lois, how do you deal with this?” She smiled and said – “I’m gonna tell you but you still won’t understand – I am only a symbol of what they have found in Alanon”. She blew me away – she knew who she was – just a symbol.

Nicola: That’s real humility isn’t it? Reminds me of a Marianne Williamson quote where she asks “who are we not to shine?”

Bill: Yes and Lois knew you could shine as a symbol. You don’t have to pound your chest and tell the world how good you are, just shine naturally and the world will see it.

Nicola: With the array of treatment options in our modern society, do you still think that twelve step is the most effective for alcoholics?

Bill: That’s a very interesting question – and I’ll tell you why. I’m talking with a Physician right now in New York who specializes in addiction. We discussed how people have been critical of the twelve step model over the past ten or twelve years, saying it’s not science based and all that. I’m thinking about writing a book about it. We have discussed other types of treatments, and I’ve talked to others in the field also and they have come to the conclusion that the best treatment in the whole world is a twelve step program. The main reason for that is because this is a threefold disease. Mental, physical and spiritual. And while other treatments may treat the physical aspects and even the mental, there’s only one program that can treat the spiritual aspect and that’s the twelve step program. Because it is the only one that has the ability to help you find something greater than yourself.

Nicola: What do you think is the cause of alcoholism – is there a gene or is it mostly learned behavior and our environment?

Bill: I believe that it’s a combination. I have great faith in science and medical people, and especially those who are members of twelve step groups. It has been proven that there is a gene connected with alcoholism, but that’s not the whole story. The second part of the story is the environment that we grow up in. It’s a genetic link and then the environment enhances our chances of becoming alcoholic ourselves. It’s my understanding that if you have one parent who is alcoholic you have a fifty percent chance of becoming alcoholic also. If both parents are, then it rises to seventy five percent. It’s the same with drug addicts.

Nicola:  Well Bill, It’s been an absolute pleasure to connect with you as a fellow writer and recovered alcoholic. The world truly has so much to learn from you. You have made me think a little deeper about writing my own story in detail – although I’m not sure I’m brave enough just yet.

Bill: I’ve thoroughly enjoyed and am so grateful for our connection Nicola. I hope you do write that book. We should never waste the talents we have been give. We should always use them to enhance the world if we can.

My brief encounter with this gentle and soft spoken, native New Yorker left me feeling privileged to have connected, almost directly, with the founders of Alanon and Alcoholics Anonymous. Bill Borchert truly carries the spirit of the original twelve step message. If you have any doubts about the effectiveness of this eighty year old solution for alcoholism, Bills Borcherts story may help to dispel them. This book is a message for the entire world. It is totally possible to recover from addiction, and for alcoholics/addicts and their families to thrive and live in peace.

Bill Borchert“How I Became My Father – A Drunk”, is available on Amazon. Bill’s other books include “The Skyline Is a Promise,” “50 Quiet Miracles That Changed Lives,” “When Love Is Not Enough,” “Sought Through Prayer and Meditation,” “When Two Loves Collide,” and “1,000 Years of Sobriety”.

Reposted from I Love Recovery Cafe

Book Marketing Ideas That Can Help Authors Increase Sales: Know Your Audience

1. Survey your audience. Ask questions about demographics, psychographics, and online behavior so you can better understand where to market to readers and what messaging they’ll respond to. Survey your existing audience and fans of comparable authors and books.

2. Conduct reader interviews. Try to understand how your readers find new books to read and make their purchasing decisions. This will add qualitative color that can help you understand quantitative data you analyze in spreadsheets.

3. Create reader personas. Write a short paragraph that describes each core group of readers you’re targeting. Refer back to it whenever you’re creating an ad, designing a cover, writing a tweet, or want a refresh on your audience’s motives.

4. Create a list of target keywords. Compile a list of of search queries that your target audience is using to search for books. Use tools like Google Trends and Google AdWords’ Keyword tool to see which relevant queries are frequently used.

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The spirit cannot endure the body when overfed, but, if u...

The spirit cannot endure the body when overfed, but, if underfed, the body cannot endure the spirit—Saint Francis de Sales

Happy Easter!